AFL Round 15 – Review: The 2013 ‘Mopsy’ Fraser Cup

Greetings Tipsters

There is no time like the mid-season to take a mid-season break.  Zeus does it every year and, like many a club president, the executive branch of ‘Stop Privatisation Of Football Productions’ did so too.

Unlike Zeus, with his European ski holidays, we took our breather at a Buddhist monastery in Cambodia, located on a particularly beautiful palm-fringed beach.  Brett Kirk had wanted to drop in for a spot of meditation in November but the monks reckoned he wasn’t tough enough.  It’s not for everyone, but it was just right for us.

We were forced into it quite suddenly, and in some part due to Brett.  It seems so long ago, but we were gathered around the 126 inch prototype Ultra High High Definition screen at Headquarters, digging the Mayblooms taking on the Wiggles in the Terrordome.  It was wonderful!  Twelve goals in the first quarter, 35 for the match, fast and hard and everything you’d want in Twenty-Thirteen football.  Two days later, we were back again, with gourmet lamb pies and Fatima’s mum’s homemade tomato sauce, the weather in Perth was perfect, the sun shone and…  fourteen goals in a match.  Ten to the last break.

I hold nothing against Ross Lyon personally, but, by the gods, I hope he never wins a flag as a coach.  There is no doubting his effectiveness, but his teams are so goddamned boring to watch! The SPOFP marketing chick threw herself off the balcony – fortunately, she landed in the jacuzzi – so it was clearly time for a team bonding exercise.  We flew into Phnom Penh eighteen hours later.

The monks have an especially sophisticated communications setup.  We caught several matches from days of yore whilst there.  After a deeply serious day of getting in touch with our many and varied lives and surfboards, we would repair to the dining hut.  Palm thatched roof, palm log pillars and packed dirt floor.  148 inch prototype Ultra High High Definition screen.  Several decades of football matches.

The 1967 Grand Final is a great match.  The 1977 drawn Grand Final is, no matter what the folks at the ground thought on the day, kinda lousy.  It’s unfair to compare part-timers, blokes who pretty much did it for fun, to the fulltime professionals of today who’ve being sitting in team meetings since they were 12.  Skills in the 1970s were nothing like they are today, fitness was even further removed.  Some matches are still great, many aren’t.

We flicked ahead, through many a finals series, and rode the waves of change.  It was a gradual evolution best pinpointed by the Wiggles win in 1992.  Professionalism was a’happening.

Fulltime professional footballers, born and raised, it was always gonna change the game.  When players could run and run and run, coaches were gonna utilise the advantages of increased aerobic fitness and strength and skills.  We watched a lot of old football matches in that beachside monastery, each accompanied by songs from the same year.  We agreed that some professionalism is good, but not too much, that Lethal’s Lions were the last of the classic football teams, that we had to dig really deep to find mid-eighties songs worth listening to, that the nineteenth man is worth re-evaluating.

Zeus is just treading water these days, he’s writing up his CV and maybe thinking of a plush and easy government appointment.  His successor will be super-keen to make his mark, so expect more than the usual idiocy.  We might be back on the beach in Cambodia.  There’s a shooting range there too.

Good luck, Tipsters

 

P&C, a Stop Privatisation Of Footy Production, a division of Trans Dementia Inc.

Brought to you with the assistance of The Beatles’ ‘Revolver’, perhaps the most perfect album ever recorded.

About Earl O'Neill

Freelance gardener, I've thousands of books, thousands of records, one fast motorcycle and one gorgeous smart funny sexy woman. Life's pretty darn neat.

Comments

  1. Love it, Mr Mops. I didn’t understand a word, except that ‘Revolver’ is awesome. Agreed.
    I’ll have what you’re having.

  2. Earl O'Neill says

    High on life, Peter.
    Working on the ‘Top Ten Albums, 1954-1977’ list, it’s a lot harder than Top Ten Singles.

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